Vitalism? No Thanks!

A throw-away thought: Despite being profoundly influenced by a variety of vitalistic philosophers– Deleuze, Bergson, Nietzsche, Whitehead, and so on –I confess that my skin literally crawls whenever I hear thinkers defend vitalism. What profound disappointment I experience when I hear a thinker I admire– Deleuze, Massumi, Braidotti, Bennett (?), Whitehead, Bergson, etc –defend either vitalism or something that is basically equivalent to vitalism. I realize part of my reaction here is purely linguistic. For example, when Braidotti defends vitalism, she’s not– I think/I hope –defending some “life force” that animates matter and differs fundamentally from matter. No, Braidotti, inasmuch as I understand her, is referring to the capacity of matter to self-organize such as we find in the case of chemical clocks.

But if that’s true, why use a term as obnoxious as “vitalistism”. We don’t need some special vitalistic forces to account for chemical clocks. Chemistry alone will do the job. I just can’t help but feel like something magical is being snuck in the back door here, that something warm and happy is being introduced into our philosophy of nature; and– Lucretian that I am –I just can’t help but feel that such moves are retrograde. Oh how I want to puke when Stuart Kauffman, an otherwise great theorist, talks of things like “being home in the universe” and “reinventing the sacred”. No Stuart! No! You’ve done so well analyzing the mechanics of self-organization, and now you recoil from what you’ve accomplished to some sort of mystical life-force? Lucretius got it right when, in Book V of De Rerum Natura, he wrote,

Another fallacy comes creeping in whose errors you should be meticulous in trying to avoid– don’t think our eyes, our bright and shining eyes, were made for us to look ahead with; don’t suppose our thigh-bones fitted our shin-bones, and our shins our ankles, so that we might take steps; don’t think that arms dangled from shoulders and branched out in hands with fingers at their ends, both right and left, for us to do whatever need required for our survival. All such argument, all such interpretation, is perverse, fallacious, puts the cart before the horse. No bodily thing was born for us to use, nature had no such aim, but what was born creates the use. There could be no such thing as sight before the eyes were formed, no speech before the tongue was made, but tongues began long before speech was uttered, and ears were fashioned long before a sound was heard, and all the organs, I feel sure, were there before their use developed; they could not evolve for the sake of use, be so designed.

No teleology, no purpose, no goal, no ultimate ontological meaning. I guess, on these points, the Sartrean existentialism of my teen years and early 20s is just too deeply written in my bones, my DNA. The universe of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is more my speed than The Life of Pi. It’s an absurd universe, a contingent universe, a cruel universe. Scratch that. Cruelty would imply intentionality and malice. No, it’s an indifferent universe. It’s a universe where sometimes there are tremendously beautiful things, where amazing things take place, but where also horrible things take place on a daily basis, both among humans, in the animal world, and elsewhere in other galaxies. Somewhere, right now, there’s a solar system with a planet with a rich culture and ecosystem that’s in the throws of being devoured by a star whose energy has become so depleted that it can no longer prevent its own fiery expansion. There’s no malice to this. There’s no meaning to it. It’s just what happens. And so it goes.

And maybe that’s it with vitalism. Vitalism, even though it allegedly moves in a posthuman direction, still seems a little too close to human narcissism. It still seems a little too close to the idea that all of this somehow has a meaning, that it can somehow be redeemed, that there’s still somehow a purpose behind things. While I think we have many purposes, I just can’t accept the idea– here I have my Ivan Karamozov moment –that there’s a purpose to the cancer that fells a person, to the tsunamic that tears a family apart, and all the rest. And honestly, at the end of the day, I just can’t help thinking of both all the psychological misery caused by the idea of divine plans as well as all the horrific violence that’s been committed in the name of eschatologies, weather religious or secular. Melancholia depicts a cold, absurd, indifferent universe, but at least they embrace each other in those final moments, despite not liking one another. Perhaps the more we come to understand just how indifferent the universe is, perhaps the more we come to understand just how contingent life is, perhaps the more we understand that we’re not at the center of creation, the more we will have regard for each other and this biosphere.

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26 Responses to “Vitalism? No Thanks!”

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber. So it goes…” (Slaughterhouse Five)

Does vitalism necessarily imply global overarching teleology? Or warm happies for that matter? I guess it is often used that way, but if there’s a life force it animates all things gross and ugly as well as the nice and fuzzy ones.

Some of my toying with vitalism might be interesting (or not — I’m not officially in the philosophy business).

“Above all, we must awaken to and overcome the great hidden anthropocentric projection that has virtually defined the modern mind: the pervasive projection of soullessness onto the cosmos by the modern self’s own will to power.” – Tarnas

The most anthropocentric thing of all is to think that humans are the sole arbiters of meaning, purpose or intention in the universe.

Human narcissism and nihilism go hand in hand. The nihilistic existential worldview of an indifferent, cold universe devoid of meaning (except for what ostensibly human meanings we project onto it) is hand-in-hand with narcissism. It is certainly an appropriate phase when one is 19 or 20 years old. Everyone needs to “pass through” nihilism and become post-nihilistic — to remain pre-nihilistic is to remain stuck in the Imaginary bliss of oceanic merging, fantasies of dual relations with the (m)other and so on. Yet to remain stuck in nihilism is stunted at a developmental phase which could do nothing better than outgrow it self.

Reblogged this on deleuzianexcursus and commented:
This makes me laugh… but I think hits on something important: language sensitivity. I also admit to feeling a little queasy when I hear the word ‘vitalism’, where ‘life force’ can simultaneously mean new age-y and what I want to understand as a fundamental idea of energy and its transference: energy is not destroyed, it is merely transferred. It also makes me think about Spinoza, and some of his sticky language that makes me nervous. It makes me ‘celebrate’ the post-structuralist stance of the unfixed nature of language: the definition of a concept can be re-dressed in new language that better matches the socio-cultural milieu.

I don’t think it’s an adolescent phase, but just the way things are. You can try to turn the tables as you do here, but I’ve never seen any compelling evidence for the thesis that there’s some sort of metaphysical meaning to being. I have, however, seen a lot of cruelty, violence, and psychic suffering arise out of such beliefs.

Machine is a rather clunky, 19th-century metaphor, too. Yes, vitalism is an outmoded term, but machinism doesn’t strike me as much of an advance (and doesn’t do justice, in my view, to the philosophy you are developing).

I also worry about the language of vitalism (particularly ‘life force’, which just sounds totally irredeemable). However, only if we’re clear that vitalism necessarily implies a pre-ordained telos does this critique apply forcefully – otherwise, as you said, this is just a quarrel over language. For the sake of seeking out something worth rescuing, I might suggest that for Deleuze (and possibly Bergson and Whitehead, although I’m not prepared to speak about them) vitalism just names the creative, vital, or dynamic character of matter itself; but this character should be taken to be attributable, contra Hegel, even to inorganic matter: it’s not just organisms that self-organize, and in any case there’s no God and no telos.

This idea I think is quite consistent with the kind of materialism you’ve been reflecting on lately by way of Democritus/Lucretius, and it’s definitely compatible with the language of machines that D&G offer – particularly with its emphasis on flows. I’ve become more and more convinced that their machinic terminology of flows and breaks is developed, among other reasons, on the basis of what Serres highlights as one of the central insights of Epicurean materialism: that fluid physics is prior to and more fundamental than solid physics, that solid bodies are just fluids moving in slow motion. Flows can then be seen as the category appropriate for understanding bodily interactions.

But in any event, ‘vitalism’ in a critical sense might just be a helpful reminder that matter doesn’t name a passive and static receptacle for human action, but instead has radically creative and dynamic capacities on its own, without the need for human mediation or intervention – certainly something too easily forgotten in many circles today.

“Above all, we must awaken to and overcome the great hidden anthropocentric projection that has virtually defined the modern mind: the pervasive projection of soullessness onto the cosmos by the modern self’s own will to power.” – Tarnas

I don’t follow his reasoning here. The nihilistic claim is precisely the opposite: no project onto the cosmos. No designation of meaning, purpose or intention.

I also fail to see what is narcissistic about essentially claiming one’s life is without meaning. One is basically saying the self is not worthwhile.

As for the psychological reading of it as a phase I would counter that one sees more childishness in our various illusions, ‘beliefs,’ and distractions than one will ever find in nihilism.

I broadly agree with most of what’s been said, here. I think that a kind of machinic thinking can help us understand how it is that matter is inherently creative. This is because articulation into modular (molecular) components seems to make it easier to reuse components in new contexts. Where any part of a system needs every other part to function, it is less easy to find new “couplings” or uses for those bits without potentially endangering the whole.

I tend to agree. ‘Vitalism,’ as usually understood, implies something added to matter that matter on its own lacks. Redefining the term to pertain instead to something intrinsic to matter itself doesn’t help because that over-generalises what is really quite a specific state of matter, i.e. life. Matter shouldn’t be said to ‘lack’ life-like qualities because that would mean that it needed something else, something other to animate it — vitality of some kind. But, equally, life-like qualities are not evident everywhere and not every form of dynamic self-organisation is equivalent or even analogous to life.

This is something that a realist, materialist or naturalist philosophy has to grasp. It places us in a bit of a bind, actually; a duality of demands.

On the one hand, yes, we are made out of the same stuff as the rest of existence. Our bodies are made from atoms that were once part of stars, we share ancestors with all life on earth, etc. etc. So, there is this sense of kinship with the rest of existence that comes from realising that we are not made in god’s image but are wholly natural. If we do not have immortal souls and do not, thereby, transcend the rest of merely natural, material existence then we are connected to the rest of existence in quite a profound way. Matter is not Other to life, life emerges from matter — realising this (and it’s not just the techno-scientific culture of the present that has realised this) reveals a deep relationship with the rest of material existence that is of paramount philosophical importance.

And yet, on the other hand, god is dead; if we are not made in his image, we also have to reconcile ourselves with being’s profound *indifference* with respect to us. If (or, rather, when) we annihilate ourselves as a species life, matter, energy, entropy — all these things will carry on regardless. Whatever life we haven’t extinguished along with our own will thrive in our absence. What’s more, the vast majority of the known universe that is apparently completely lifeless will continue to evolve along its own self-organising trajectories, blissfully indifferent to the remarkable, peculiar particularities of that form of self-organisation we call ‘life.’ On the scale of natural time, human existence will appear and disappear in the blink of a pulsar.

We anthropomorphise and vitalise the world in order to articulate it in terms we can understand but that doesn’t mean that our metaphors are really germane to the inner workings of matter — in fact they are not, which is why there are so very many ways of articulating the basic facts of existence, in so many languages, in so many manners of speaking.

So, philosophy, I think, has to do justice to two seemingly incompatible intuitions: we are, at once, at home in nature and, at the same time, largely inconsequential to it.

Paul, the basic jist is that if meaning is sustained by my own activity, existentially defined by me in my own unique incommensurate bubble, then all morality is a subset of the will to power; every single value and beauty is a form of imposition, and all the values of existence lie within you, (or within society, if you allow meaning to be shared between people) and must be constructed on the world. This means any appeal to values is just someone trying to construct his values within you, and should be suspected on that basis, and possibly opposed. It’s also pretty tiring to be the only sustainer of value.

Of course, deciding that meaning is universal and ubiquitous leads to people trying to come to terms with and be at home with some things that possibly they really shouldn’t. Stoicism in the face of evil, suspension of judgement of your own murderous behaviour, fatalism towards your own avoidable suffering.

Alternatively, claiming that we are already at home with the world as a whole, rather than that we can be leads to many of the same narcissistic problems as the first option, although swapping it’s existential fury for swallowing denial. It’s a very odd situation.

There is a middle position though, and one that ties to the Lucrentius quote above; meaning is real but accidental. It can be found in the world, not merely created, and is not purely a function of our own inherent constructions. Purpose-friendly and beautiful things will appear in various places in the world, and the world is neither alien to them nor full of them.

This means that meaning and purpose is something precious to be found and preserved, or looked for, an eye holds the power to see, but it will not only form where you expect it, or where it would be useful. It can still be constructed or developed on, but it cannot be relied on to appear everywhere, some things will always be inhuman.

I personally think this makes more sense than saying that we are alone in the universe, on every layer; people are not pure other, sometimes they surprise us with common feeling, it’s not our internally constructed culture against others, they have some bits in them that we’d value, there might be aliens out there, doing their own intelligent thing, and probably larger scale syntheses of morality and physics exist in certain conditional domains.

At each stage, there’s a few nice and familiar bits and pieces out there in a sea of foreign confusion, and to get at it you have to go out there and find ways to accommodate the weirdness that it is attached to.

(This is one of the few blogs I read regularly and I nearly always learn something or am prompted to think more…Obviously it would be weird to ‘agree’ with everything the texan says):)

In your thesis perhaps even the term ‘indifferent’ univers is too strong. Still almost involving an experiential stance? To be indifferent suggests the poss of actually having an interest…the rock is not even indifferent to the ground.

There may be a more ‘palindromic’ position…neither a cuddly universe, nor a blind dawkins like one – such as that proposed by the Argentine neurobiological tradition (AGNT). In this approach pscyhes have intrinsic ‘value’…

Mind-brain research in Argentina stems from a 250-year neurobiological tradition that has focused on what today would be called the dynamic “sculpting” of intensities of the electric field inside brain tissue; this, more technically, is also called the dielectric states of electroneurobiological organs Here are a few quotes from Mario Crocco’s work which show that it is not a vitalism.

‘Hylozoism. In contrast, hylozoists do not feel compelled to silence the finding of conation or voluntary action in their description of nature. And the Argentinian neurobiological tradition is hylozoist, namely a monism of efficient causation (or recognition that causation is unique) which was often mistaken as vitalism (the doctrine that mindless organic life is a principle distinct from physics and chemistry). This misinterpretation, since approximately 1950, during a time when molecular genetics showed the final impossibility of vitalisms, has contributed to its breakaway from international dialogue in order to sustain itself on its long series of investigative results.’

‘The basic fact of contemporary hylozoism is that minds are found in nature reciprocally extrinsic, existentially disassociated, and constitutively not taking part in each other. That is to say, minds are found in nature as constrained discrete finitudes, each fully exterior to the others without any circumincession or mergeability, nor any shared availability of mental contents or perichoresis. Consequently isolable (“separable” and “separability” are synonymous with “local” and “locality” in a context that situates the causal exchanges of circumstanced experiencings), each mind notices different happenings and performs different actions. Further, they are eclosions (“poppings out”), some of whose features are indeterminable by their causally antecedent conditions; minds are not emergences or colligative states of these antecedents.’

‘A Palindrome:
Mindful Living Creatures as Instruments of Nature;
Nature as an Instrument of Mindful Living Creatures
Mario Crocco
Abstract
What goes on in the universe parades to natural scientists as an axiological palindrome. If, through observation of reality, one comes to recognize that mindful living creatures – those commanded by a subjective existence or mind, whether human or of some other species – were used as a means, that is to say functionalized, by some physical process (namely, biospheric evolution), then one must also recognize that biospheric evolution was in turn functionalized or used as a means to afford responsibility to some mindful living creatures. In other words, a mirror or reciprocal functionalization is observed in which each of both realities uses for its own ends the reality that uses it as a means, and therefore one must recognize that the ontological makeup or consistency of every conscious living creature’s mind includes intrinsic value. In support of this recognition, in this chapter first the causal involvements of minds are outlined. Then features of every causal action in nature are explained, and how these features of causality organized the entire natural world, in particular the generation and use of sensations in nature. Then it is shown that this scenario is incompatible with both identity theory, namely thinking that minds are essentially identical to the realities which evolve independently of the observer’s mind, and also with declaring these outer realites unknowable.’

Entropy:
‘Summaries are always denser than the main text. Yet in this summary explanation I would like to introduce the main outline of this chapter in a few pages. It is a worthwhile exercise because the main aim of the chapter is the development of this outline, which might disappear from view in the necessary discussion of individual topics. This discussion forms the chapter’s body and is naturally clearer than a succinct initial summary, but for the present a map of the territory that we intend to explore is necessary. I will begin by explaining a key scientific concept which declares that living organisms flourish as a means to dull by the quickest way the shine reflected by their environment. The concept, polished in the branch of physics called generalized thermodynamics, became important way away of this specialized sector; put into precise – far more opaque – technical words, it announces that biospheric differentiation optimizes the disordering of planetary albedo on the shortest path.’

‘How can light reflected by a planet, simply as it becomes paler, bring about such an outcome – forests and orchards, birds and whales, petals and wings, brains and sentiments? Enraptured, one may contemplate silvery moonshine and even understand that the key scientific concept discussed here explains that moonshine remains undiminished for eons – not becoming paler – precisely because the dispassionate moon lacks a biosphere. Yet, what is the connection? How does a brilliance-spoiling fermentation drive the natural selection of our bodies and of their making of our sensations? Let us examine this question in more detail.’
How can light reflected by a planet, simply as it becomes paler, bring about such an outcome – forests and orchards, birds and whales, petals and wings, brains and sentiments? Enraptured, one may contemplate silvery moonshine and even understand that the key scientific concept discussed here explains that moonshine remains undiminished for eons – not becoming paler – precisely because the dispassionate moon lacks a biosphere. Yet, what is the connection? How does a brilliance-spoiling fermentation drive the natural selection of our bodies and of their making of our sensations? Let us examine this question in more detail.
How can light reflected by a planet, simply as it becomes paler, bring about such an outcome – forests and orchards, birds and whales, petals and wings, brains and sentiments? Enraptured, one may contemplate silvery moonshine and even understand that the key scientific concept discussed here explains that moonshine remains undiminished for eons – not becoming paler – precisely because the dispassionate moon lacks a biosphere. Yet, what is the connection? How does a brilliance-spoiling fermentation drive the natural selection of our bodies and of their making of our sensations? Let us examine this question in more detail.
How can light reflected by a planet, simply as it becomes paler, bring about such an outcome – forests and orchards, birds and whales, petals and wings, brains and sentiments? Enraptured, one may contemplate silvery moonshine and even understand that the key scientific concept discussed here explains that moonshine remains undiminished for eons – not becoming paler – precisely because the dispassionate moon lacks a biosphere. Yet, what is the connection? How does a brilliance-spoiling fermentation drive the natural selection of our bodies and of their making of our sensations? Let us examine this question in more detail…..(Mario Crocco)

‘Other notions bring in particular sociological convolutions: for example, “observation of reality” is plainly intelligible for most natural scientists, sacrilegious nonsense for many humanist scholars, and, in the author’s milieu, a result of the news explained in this
chapter.’ :)

Isn’t that just a biological theory of value? I don’t see how that contradicts what I’m claiming. I don’t deny that humans and animals value in all sorts of ways. That’s quite different than claiming that the universe has a plan or meaning. Clearly cats are wired to find all sorts of things valuable (dead birds, moles, mice, etc). But that value arises from the cats bio-cognitive activity. It’s not in the dead mouse itself.

Yes, you may well be right. Altho Ruyer’s ‘Neo-finalisme’ (which both D & G were fond of) might not quite go as far as ‘you’. “Meaning and direction (sens) are inherent in the organic and inorganic world”. ‘Ruyer holds that an action, as it unfolds itself in a spatiotemporal world of cause and effect, cannot be understood without ref to its goal. This ‘finality’ of action gives meaning to all that is purely a succession of causes and effects in it.’ A subjectivity cannot be defined as a substance, but rather as an existing
centre of finalist activity…(q.v. Spinoza) (Rolf Wilkund, A short intro to the neofinalist phil of Raymond Ruyer. Phil and Phenomenological Research, 21, 187-198)

Just for the biblio record Raymond Ruyer, Neo-Finalisme (Paris: PUF., 1952). ”Throughout his work R has directed a double critique against mechanism and dynamism (gestalt), which differs from the critique made by phenomenology.’ (WIP, p233, fn 11). I have a pdf of neo-finalisme (somehow!). Not an easy bk to obtain…it makes for interesting reading in the barrenness of some academies. I doubt whether it is ever mentioned today….and yet to v. interesting thinkers found it v. valuable. In fact there is a good argument that the concept of abs immanence is drawn from Ruyer’s concept of ‘absolute survey’ (see concl to WIP) but that’s another story…dinner beckons, as you often say:)

Having said that there is no reason why the ‘universe’ would have any stance toward people. Gaia can and may do without us sooner or later..:) There are also vast theological tracts on these questions, distinguishing between ‘natural disaster’, man made disaster, etc…at a catholic univ you could do a degree in it!!!!!!!!!!
‘You, the unoriginated or nonproduced portion of reality, cannot mandate
freedom because mandating it would wipe it out. Neither can you simulate
it, because freedom comprises the power of causing its results and the
power of causes is not simulatable. What then do you do to produce genuine
freedom in reality, if freedom does not admit either coercion or simulation?
One of the ways is that you erect a nature whose galaxies, starstudded
skies, complex substances formed in outer space, planets, and living
beings follow general rules of transformation and evolve impersonally,
so that you may rest interventionally silent. That is, you make an extramental
nature with everything possessed with forces efficient to cause the
proper effect, so that you may govern nature only through very general interventions
of your determination. You make things appear like a display
showing that you have absolutely no task to carry out and never had one,
so making yourself forgettable as if you yourself might well not have occurred
at all. This nature may even be nonuniform in its basic regularities:
these need not be the same everywhere. Thus such extramental nature may
contain infinite subuniverses that do not allow the development of empsychable
organizations. Yet in some at least of its sites, defined by extremely
precise conditions of hospitality to life, for brief periods substrates
are formed that allow personal existentialities to interact and actively learn
about extramentalities. In this way your vigilant immediacy makes an observable
universe endowed with the precise features that the intelligent finite
existentialities, which you may then circumstance to the highly improbable
empsychable bodies evolved in it, would expect if, from the start, you
had not been there – and there had been no designer, no purpose, no value
such as absolute good or evil, nothing but blind and relentless indifference.’

I’m not sure why anyone should entertain such panpsychist hypotheses. Sure, it’s possible that things could be that way, but is there any compelling empirical reason to believe that they are? Gaia might indeed bring about the extinction of humans, but that doesn’t entail that Gaia has a preference or lack of preference for humans. This would be a purely causal affair, not a matter of meaning and purposiveness.

Dr Sinthome you may have scratched out the cruel, but that’s exactly what you meant isn’t it .You experience the world as cruel, and you long for a different one. If you didn’t , you would have arranged a do-it-yourself Melancholia moment a long time ago.

Melancholia depicts a cold, absurd, indifferent universe, but at least they embrace each other in those final moments, despite not liking one another.

I feel that even though your average Christian would describe this event as sublime and transcendent – those are not at all the words to describe it. This is not an explosion; it is an implosion; and it is not evolution, it is involution.
I think the sense of awe and release rather comes from the sisters’ realization that both withdrawal and relation are possible at the same time, or in other words that there is no divide between the soul and the body, between heaven and earth, between the now and the tomorrow. The screen goes black not because this is an end, but because it is now eternity, and it therefore cannot be shown anymore – not even in glorious 3D.

By accepting something completely impossible and inhuman, the sisters finally become human.

A true misunstanding here.
I didn’t mean that Gaia has a pref for anything. Of course not!!! Actually, Stengers writes about this in the sequel to capitalist sorcery (A time of disasters: resistance to impending barbarism). “Aux temps des catastrophes. Not translated…unfortunatelyhttp://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Au_temps_des_catastrophes-9782707156839.html
As for pansychism, that’s exactly what the AGNT reject. There is not psyche everywhere a la Whitehead and others. Psyches are discrete, finite and not found anywhere in this world except eclosed to brains (whether human or not) and from which they do not ‘emerge’. It’s not hard…

‘Rari nantes in gurgite vasto. This “sea,” or the separation of minds by unmindful segments of nature, or hylozoistic discontinuity found among the natural sites, is properly called the hylozoic hiatus. And we find ourselves to be rari nantes in gurgite vasto (rare swimmers shipwrecked in a vast abyss), as Virgil considered the human condition in Æneid I, 118.’ (Crocco)

not sure if it’s my comp dying but internet explorer no longer displays ‘leave a reply’ properly. Which might explain some of my repetitions. I now realize that you must be referring to Ruyer when you mention pansychism – altho Spinoza gets close to this? Altho I know virtually nothing about the lens grinder.

In Orthodox theology, in the Eastern ascetic traditions one of the goals of ascetic practice is to obtain sobriety of consciousness, awakeness (nepsis). For humankind this is reached in the healing of whole person called the soul, heart. When a person’s heart is reconciled with their mind, this is referred to as a healing of the nous or the “eye, focus of the heart or soul”.[272][273] Part of this process is the healing and or reconciliation of humankind’s reason being called logos or dianoia with the heart, soul.[274] While mankind’s spirit and body are energies vivified by the soul, Orthodoxy teaches man’s sin, suffering, sorrow is caused by his heart and mind being a duality and in conflict.[275] According to Orthodox theology, lack of noetic understanding (sickness) can be neither circumvented nor satisfied by rational or discursive thought (i.e. systematization),[272] and denying the needs of the human heart (a more Western expression would be the needs of the soul) causes various negative or destructive manifestations such as addiction, atheism and evil thoughts etc.[276][277] A cleaned, healed or restored Nous creates the condition of sobriety or nepsis of the mind.